A new report by the good folks at Democracy North Carolina offers a snapshot of North Carolina’s registered Latino voters and the potential impact this voting bloc could have in this critical election year.

The report released Wednesday reveals that North Carolina has 115,000 registered Latino voters or nearly 25,000 more than the official count at the State Board of Elections, which only began asking voters their ethnicity in 2002.

The report says another 100,000 unregistered Latino citizens could be signed up to vote by November.

“Mobilizing 225,000 eligible Latino voters in a swing state like North Carolina could have a dramatic impact on a tight presidential election,” said Isela Gutiérrez-Gunter, who wrote the report with her colleague Bob Hall of Democracy North Carolina, a nonpartisan voting rights group.

Other key findings from the report include:

· The number of registered Latino voters in North Carolina is steadily increasing, which is not the case in some other states. It has climbed by 35% since October 2008, while the total number of registered voters in NC has increased by only 2% in that period.

· The Latino electorate in NC is young: 62% of registered Latino voters are ages18-40, compared to 34% of registered white voters and 43% of registered black voters.

· Although a plurality (44%) of Hispanic voters in North Carolina are registered Democrats, Unaffiliated voters also make up a sizeable portion (37%), which suggests that neither party should take the growing Latino vote for granted.